We commend our Supreme Court for its timely, unanimous and thoroughly-researched (62-page) decision upholding the bond-financing response to the budget crisis caused by the pandemic. It may be one of the most momentous decisions in the history of our post-1948 Supreme Court.

As noted several times on this page, the challengers to the plan argued a literal interpretation of two state constitutional clauses of Article VIII. This would have resulted, in the court’s view, in the absurd result that funds could be borrowed through the sale of bonds but that the proceeds could not be spent, or counted as “revenue,” to balance the pandemic-devastated budget. The court also noted that the debates in the 1947 Constitutional Convention that led to the adoption of the crucial “emergency” language centered on approval of the legislature’s bond-finance responses to the Great Depression, still looming large in the rear-view mirror of those delegates, and similar to the effects of the current pandemic.

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